May 31, 2009

Former president of Harvard University whose mouth got him ousted from that prestigious job, Larry made his way back into the national spotlight via the Obama Administration. Yeah, and the media caught a neat photo of him sleeping at a high-level meeting. Come to think of it, there hasn't been a flattering photo since he's been inside the beltway.

This weekend there's been more dumping on Larry. Now he's being fingered as one of the prime movers in the meltdown of the Harvard University endowment. The once proud institution which everyone assumed was invulnerable now is vulnerable to real financial woes. Its endowment down $11 billion, partly due to Summers's decisions impacting the investment portfolio, Harvard may have to do the unthinkable. That ranges from laying off tenured faculty to leaving a hole in the ground where it was planning to expand the campus.

Larry got dumped on in the influential ATLANTIC. The title of the piece by Derek Thompson is "How Harvard University Almost Destroyed Itself." There was also a major - and I mean major article - in the June edition of BOSTON Magazine. It's by Richard Bradley. It gleefully looks at Harvard's current mess. And it prominently features Larry's application of his genius financial mind on the endowment.

Of course, this highlighting of Larry's role in screwing with and up Harvard's money puts a serious new hit on his image with The Establishment. Do anything to The Establishment but reduce its money potential - present and future. The monied class must be fearful about what Larry could be up to with a whole lot more money - present and future - on-the-line.

May 30, 2009

Tonight on "Harper's Island" Abby grows in wisdom. And all it took was a pile-up of dead bodies. Last week Wellington was offed and this week his daughter wants to call off the wedding. But Abby advises daughter against letting a murderer takes more than her father.

While on the island, Abby has been unfrozen from her grief over her mother's brutal murder and the trauma that followed it when her father abruptly sent her away. The episode ends with the identity of the killer still a mystery. In addition, Madison has gone missing.

Why I am so ensnared in this soap opera, I have no clue. But ensnared I am. Incidentally if Madison is offed I won't mind that a bit.

Call it the classic arrogance of the elite. No one at Harvard and no one who revered Harvard ever anticipated - and some still don't accept -that a Black Swan could darken its present and future.

As many know, "black swan" is a concept described by financial world expert Nassim Taleb to denote an unexpected development which can and will have unexpected profound impacts. For Harvard the black swan has been a severe reversal in the institution's endowment. In the June 2009 edition of BOSTON, Richard Bradley tells that amazing story. The impacts could range from layoffs of tenured faculty to the outsting again of a Harvard University president. Bradley is head of WORTH and author of "Harvard Rules."

Like many other organizations which perceived themselves as invulnerable, Harvard allowed those managing the endowment to shift from primarily liquid and solid assets [bonds/stocks] in the portfolio to illiquid [real estate, hedge funds, private equity]. Meanwhile the fund overleveraged itself. The rest is a familiar tale, notes Bradley.

Today the endowment is down $11 billion. The University has to pay back private investors $11 billion in the next 10 years. Meanwhile the institution had embarked on an ambitious expansion, be it hiring faculty or expanding the campus.

The current negative situation seems to be compounded by a sin from the past. In 2006, the former president outsized Larry Summers left/was driven out. He was replaced, as is typical, by his antithesis: Smallsized Drew Gilpin Faust. Low profile, unused to managing controversy, Faust might not be the best front person to lead Harvard out of the mess.

Of course, a crack in the brandname allows light to shine in on all the other faults which had been invisible or ignored in better image times. Now Harvard watchers are grousing the undergraduate education is far better elsewhere. There is finger-pointing at alleged Harvard ethos of greed. Tenured professors are talking about going elsewhere. There will be lots more of this.

Question: Does Harvard have the humility to use this crisis to make itself a better institution? Time will tell.

May 29, 2009

Maybe it should be housed in a doublewide: The Institute of White Trash Studies. That would pull in the support, financial and whatever else, of the mobile home industry.

A few year years ago I had suggested that brandname educational institutions such as Harvard College launch a Department of White Trash Studies. After all, the Ivy Leagues were way ahead of the curve in Afro-American, Women's and other niche-group programs.

But, it never did catch on. Times change. We may have more interest now as the power movement starts up again. For example, at the University of Chicago, reports Sara Olkon at THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, a new advocacy group has formed: Men in Power. Started by third-year student Steve Saltarelli, Men in Power's mission is to help males succeed professionally. Power organizations can piggyback on all the learning from way back to the civil rights movement to the same-sex-marriage initiative.

Like people of color, those with alternate sexual orientations and currently males, we from white trash backgrounds have a rough time of it. That pummeling begins in grade school, worsens in college, and eventually bars access to elite employment. Yet, we have been kept invisible or allowed ourselves to struggle under the radar, hoping we can achieve progress unilaterally.

"White Trash: Race and Class in America," edited by Matt Wary and Annalee Newitz was published in 1997. Since then, popular culture has offered little on the subject. Those ponderous articles in academic journals are about all there is. And, like who with influence and power read them and what good have they done to help us be recognized for our strengths and talents as well as overcoming adversity.

Will we gain equal rights through the courts? Could be. Yeah, maybe a major U.S. Supreme Court decision about how we were treated as separate and not equal.

I perceive myself as having been discriminated against in college [Seton Hill, Greensburg, Pennsylvania] because of my heavy working-class accent and my non-genteel street body language.

When I followed the WASPs into psychoanalytical psychotherapy while we were all in gradate school [University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan] I was too intimidated to request a change of therapist. He was a clinical psychologist in training.

You bet, I sensed the whole thing - Freudian approach, him, three times a week chatting up my deep feeling - was not a good fit for me and not filling up that gigantic hole inside [which literally became doublewide over the years.] In the late 1990s, I had my Greenwich, Connecticut [movin' on up] attorney send that therapist Dr. David W. Harder, a full professor at Tufts University], a request for his clinical notes. That did the trick: I began to develop trust, in my early 50s, in my blue-collar gut. Score one, a big one, for raw animal survival instincts.

There's more. In my first corporate job, at what was then Gulf Oil and is now Chevron, I was reprimanded for "laughing loud" and a bit too often. Oppressed subcultures are known to use humor, sometimes extreme, as a coping device. No one in the organization seemed to try to understand the differences between "them" and that "other" me.

Finally in 2003, I began exploring the advantages those from white trash, just like all those who had horrific childhoods, had/have/will have.

Here's one of the books which came from that. You can download it free, just as more than a million seekers after competitive edges have done Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg.

I re-located from upper middle class West Hartford, Connecticut to bohemian New Haven. Connecticut.

I reverted to my tough-girl body language. Funny, few mess with me any more, including Fortune 5oo and Establishment professional-services firms clients.

By studying white trash as a key subculture in America, we might finally give millions an equal start in school and work. As the nation recovers from this economic slump, there should be plenty of funding for this mission.

Delphi was supposed to be turned around and out of the soup years ago. So its Chief Executive Office Steve Miller assumed. Based on that assumption he published his book "The Turnaround Kid." In it he named names. That would have boosted book sales and probably made him come across as courageous and candid. But things didn't turn out that way.

Instead of leaving Dodge after doing his job fixing Delphi, Miller had to stay on. Only now, as THE NEW YORK TIMES reports, after four years in bankruptcy proceedings, is the company seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Miller probably isn't a student of Nassim Taleb who preaches that gospel of black swans, that is unexpected developments which can have profound unexpected impacts. Think the Internet. Think also the implosion of the U.S. auto industry.

Miller likely wasn't thinking that way. He was likely thinking linear. His book went out. He was left in Dodge to have to work with those he put the knock on in his book.

Authors, agents, publishers as well as ghostwriters can learn from Steve Miller's sad story. When he does finally ride out of Dodge, unlike his other turnarounds such as at Chrysler in the early 1980s, it won't be as a hero.

May 28, 2009

A foresenic psychologist dignosed alleged con artist Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter aka Clark Rockefeller as suffering from delusions of grandeur and narcissism. Sounds a lot like that boss we all once had, doesn't it.

May 27, 2009

Here in New Haven, Connecticut where nothing much happens except a visit now and then by famous Yale alumni [Hillary Clinton, Both Bush Presidents], there's been an amazing experiment. The May 28th - June 3, 2009 edition of the alternate weekly NEW HAVEN ADVOCATE has been primarily Made In India. And, it seems quite successfully.

The content pages which represent work done in India are stamped with a logo: Made In India. They include, believe it or not, these articles:

"Skip the Appetizer" - The new mantra for recession-hit diners [in New Haven]

"The Church and the Governor" - Dare to bring in a change to the death penalty? [in New Haven]

"Boy Chases Snail Record" [and other tidbit news items from around New Haven]

"Shad Mania" - A culinary tradition that connects Connecticut"

"Licking It Clean" - review of musical events in Hartford, CT

How did this get done? Not easily, the editor [editor@newhavenadvocate.com] details. It started with one of those throw-outs from a Mickey Rooney - Judy Garland movie. A news web site in Pasadena, California made headlines, negative and positive, when it decided to outsource.

The first step was to decide to do it or at least try it. The powers-that-be put help-wanted on Craigslist for journalists based in India. The going rate was going to be about $7.50 for about a 1000 words. [Hey, that's better to some of the vendor-wanted ads on Elance.com. One enterprise wanted to reimburse writers about a buck an article and there were about 100 of them to crank out under a tight deadline.]

They received about 100 replies, some from well-credentialed communications pros such as Dev Das. Das happens to head up the Ogilvy & Mather branch in India. They were given the focus of the story and a list of contacts.

A number of those the newspaper tried to work with didn't pan out. But enough did to demonstrate that journalism is another task that has been globalized. In fact, thanks to webcam technology, any local meeting can be covered from anywhere.

The challenge seems to be able to do this in a more standardized manner. The introduction and logistics, contends the editor, were very time-consuming. Those of us who use contract help understand that. For that very reason, organizations still prefer to hire full-time workers who they can bank on will be there, have an investment in learning the ropes quickly, and are motivated to perform well on a sustained basis.

Of course, there remains the political heat of sending work out of the U.S. There are plenty of journalists unemployed or underemployed right here in New Haven.

The publicity pro in me advises the editor of the NEW HAVEN ADVOCATE to pitch this story in the form of a case study to top-tier media. The entrepreneur in me says to standardize this into a model and sell the package to other publications, print and digital.

Procter & Gamble, after its game-changer of a turnaround led by A. G. Lafley, seems to be drifting again. And, according to Christopher Steiner in FORBES, not in the right direction [key in "P&G" on FORBES.com.]

Steiner notes that Lafley has raised - yes, raised- prices. This is an era when private-label merchandise is eating brands's lunch, dinner and breakfast. He has also boosted the dividend. These moves are contrarian. There could be a shrewd strategy behind them. But many don't think so. As Steiner headlines his article, "The Tide Changes."

The professional-services industry in Manhattan might be called The House that corporations such as P&G built. Law, public relations, management consulting, accounting and more - these frequently received hefty monthly retainers, just to be available to advise the Fortune 500. These retainers could average about $60K per month. Then, add on special assignments.

This could all vanish if the tide continues to change. Already professional services in Manhattan has lost much of its swagger. Corporations have demanded discounts, pay for performance options and detailed itemization of what's being done. But not all of them, of course. There are been those still doing well.

That's what alarms P&G watchers. If this solid leader makes decisions which turn out to be bad, that could signal that the Fortune 500 still don't get it: The world of global business, driven by technology, is continually mutating. No one really understands what's occurring. That's exactly why major companies have eliminated quarterly earnings estimates.

The chatter among The New Barbarians, that is the Davids, is that the monolith BigProfessionalServices is vulnerable. It can go under in Manhattan and other major metro areas. Faster, value-priced, more innovative, the Davids could unleash a model which old-line professional services leaders wouldn't even be able to reverse-engineer and apply to their own bloated empires. An example of a David is virtual law firm Rimon. Its reach is already global.

Investor relations [IR] departments will be closely following the U.S. Supreme Court review of Merck's challenge to a shareholder lawsuit. The core issue is the timing of Merck's disclosure about fraud allegations concerning Vioxx as well as the timing of the shareholder filing of the complaint. Even the lawyers representing Merck admit there's ambiguity.

In THE NATIONAL LAW JOURNAL, Mike Scarcella provides background on this litigation. A shareholder had filed a lawsuit against Merck regarding the delay in informing investors - "storm warnings" - of possible legal problems with Vioxx. A lower court ruled that the shareholder had a two-year window to file such as suit and missed it. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that court's decision. Merck petitioned the US SC for certiorari.

The question is when does that two-year-window begin. As Scarcella points out, "The 3rd Circuit panel noted there is disagreement among circuit courts about starting points" - that is when the meter begins running for that two-year timeframe.

Those in IR, particularly given the current intense focus on all kinds of investments, will now be hyper-alert as to what has to be disclosed, how, and when.

We wounded souls seem hardwired to pick up on suffering in others. Iron Mike Tyson has frequently been on our radar screens. A guy who tried way too hard, he seemed to attract exploitation of him. Today, the universe took another dump on him but for once he wasn't a direct player in tragedy.

His four-year-old daughter Exodus died in an unusual accident. The police did declare the event an accident.

As the wounded, we understand the danger to Tyson's new-found emotional stability and sobriety the death can cause. We are with him.